The ol’ “God Machine” has a lot to offer this week….
First up, in an international edition, is an interesting lawsuit in Italy, where a judge heard arguments yesterday on whether a small-town parish priest should stand trial for asserting that Jesus Christ existed.
The priest’s atheist accuser, Luigi Cascioli, says the Roman Catholic Church has been deceiving people for 2,000 years with a fable that Christ existed, and that the Rev. Enrico Righi violated two Italian laws by reasserting the claim.
Lawyers for Righi and Cascioli, old schoolmates, made their arguments in a brief, closed-door hearing before Judge Gaetano Mautone in Viterbo, north of Rome. They said they expected the judge to decide quickly.
Cascioli filed a criminal complaint in 2002 after Righi wrote in a parish bulletin that Jesus did indeed exist, and that he was born of a couple named Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem and lived in Nazareth.
Cascioli claims that Righi’s assertion constituted two crimes under Italian law: so-called “abuse of popular belief,” in which someone fraudulently deceives people; and “impersonation,” in which someone gains by attributing a false name to a person.
And Bill O’Reilly’s new campaign to boycott Italy begins in 3…2…1…
A little closer to home, Southern Baptist conservatives have found a new target for their notoriously aggressive criticisms: each other.
The Rev. Wade Burleson, a Baptist leader from Oklahoma, says fellow conservatives who crusaded to elect only leaders who believe the Bible is literally true are carrying their campaign too far, targeting Southern Baptists who disagree with them on other issues.
These leaders, he wrote on his blog, are “following the same battle plan conservatives used to defeat liberalism,” and have started a “war” for the future of the SBC. […]
“Conservatives who loved the battles of decades past have fallen victim to a crusading mentality of bloodthirst,” Mr. Burleson wrote on [his blog]. “Since all the liberals are gone, conservative crusaders are now killing fellow conservatives…. Sadly, the Southern Baptist Convention is now moving toward a time when everyone must look the same, talk the same, act the same, believe the same on the nonessentials of the faith, or else you will be removed as ‘not one of us.”
Trustees of the Southern Baptist international missionary agency took the first step this month toward ousting Burleson from their board, which as it turns out, kind of proved his point.
And, finally, in the world of religion and politics, the Bush White House has agreed to help taxpayer-financed chaplains have more opportunities to proselytize, in uniform and on the job.
The White House will pressure the Pentagon into being more explicit in saying that military chaplains can pray in the name of Jesus Christ, an evangelical Christian chaplains’ group says.
The administration struck a deal on Thursday with Rep. Walter B. Jones, North Carolina Republican, said the Rev. Billy Baugham of the Greenville, S.C.-based International Conference of Evangelical Chaplain Endorsers.
Since October, Mr. Jones has arranged for letters from 74 members of Congress demanding an executive order to end reported religious discrimination against evangelical Christian chaplains.
Claude Allen, White House domestic policy adviser, promised the congressman that President Bush will take up the issue personally with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said Mr. Baugham, who was involved in the discussion.
The “controversy” has been a sham from the beginning. Chaplains are asked to use inclusive language that reflects the diversity of the armed forces while conducting official duties, but can pray in religious services to whomever they please. Why the White House is ready to interfere with this is a mystery.
No wonder James Madison thought military chaplains were a bad idea.